The exact circumstances that led to President Joe Biden’s dramatic withdrawal from the race for the 2024 US presidential election have been the subject of heated discussions for weeks.
Since Biden tweeted his digitally signed letter announcing the decision on Sunday, June 21, the White House line has been clear: The President was not This was his decision alone.
Sympathetic insiders described a weekend of “reflection” for the president – who recently tested positive for Covid and was in isolation with his wife, Jill, and a handful of trusted aides at the Biden family home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
On Saturday night, after weeks of insisting he was running again, something “changed,” Biden insiders said. The president asked his closest advisers to start writing his letter. Suddenly, it was all over.
That much may be true. But these insiders have consistently left out a crucial piece of the puzzle that explains why Biden’s thinking changed so quickly, and which the Mail can now exclusively reveal for the first time.
The president, who recently tested positive for COVID, has been living in isolation at the Biden family home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, with his wife, Jill, and a handful of trusted aides. (Pictured: arriving in Delaware on July 17.)
As Biden recovered from his COVID infection that fateful Saturday, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent the president an urgent message: She was ready to make public her concerns that he could not defeat Donald Trump in November.
The ultimatum was clear: Get out immediately or Pelosi will crush her political ally and friend of over 50 years on the world stage.
Four sources with close knowledge of the situation independently claimed that such a message was conveyed. One particularly well-informed source said there was a phone call in which Pelosi told Biden she would release brutal poll numbers to back up her attack.
Be that as it may, her demand was said to have been so forceful that it triggered a kind of “enlightenment” in the president and only then did he begin to write the letter announcing his resignation.
Both Pelosi’s office and the White House officially denied that the two had spoken on the phone.
This sensational revelation comes as the public dispute between Pelosi and Biden – who have not spoken since announcing his resignation – is growing uglier.
Since her new memoirs hit the market, Pelosi has been making the rounds of interviews, trying to avoid questions about her strained relationship with the president.
On Sunday, August 4, CBS anchor Lesley Stahl harassed the former speaker.
“It has been widely reported that you were the leader of a pressure campaign (to get Biden to resign)?” Stahl asked.
“No, I was not the leader of a pressure campaign,” Pelosi replied. “Let me say things I did not do: I did not call anybody.”
In an interview with the New Yorker last week, Pelosi admitted that her dispute with the president was giving her sleepless nights and that she was “praying” that their friendship could survive.
“He knows I love him,” she told CNN last Thursday.
Biden, for his part, remains angry about the way things turned out.
“He was unhappy with the way things were going when there were calls for his resignation, but he is not wasting any time thinking about it,” a source said.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (pictured) sent the president an urgent message: she is ready to make public her concerns that he will not be able to defeat Donald Trump in November.
The ultimatum was clear: Get out now or Pelosi will crush her political ally and friend of over 50 years on the world stage. (Pictured: Together in May).
In fact, Pelosi was not the only one who put pressure on Biden to withdraw his candidacy in the days and weeks following his disastrous TV debate with Trump.
Other party leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, told Biden they no longer considered his candidacy to be a viable option.
Schumer visited Biden in Delaware a week before his retreat. Insiders described the meeting as “blunt.”
Jeffries had also asked the president about the declining poll numbers of the last few days – but it was the way Pelosi delivered the final blow that apparently left Biden bitter.
In the hours after announcing his withdrawal from the race, Biden personally called members of Congress and other allies to discuss his decision.
Schumer was on the list of those who received a call from the president. Pelosi was not.
Biden, 81, and Pelosi, 84, are both long-time presences on the Washington scene, having known each other since the 1970s. Pelosi reportedly particularly enjoyed telling an early story of Biden’s kindness.
Shortly after she was first elected to Congress in 1987, she and her family took a trip to Rehoboth Beach, where Biden invited her to a party to introduce her to various Democratic donors.
But there was a problem: American golf legend Nancy Lopez had been in the news this summer, and some of Biden’s friends confused his guest with the famous athlete. Pelosi did not correct them.
The couple formed a solid political alliance.
They are both Catholic Democrats and say President John F. Kennedy inspired them to go into public service – through a man who, like them, always carried a rosary in his pocket.
During Biden’s tenure as Vice President, Pelosi became Speaker of the House of Representatives and they worked hand in hand to pass the groundbreaking Obamacare legislation.
And in 2022, when Pelosi’s husband Paul was attacked in their San Francisco home by a madman armed with a hammer, it was Biden who called early in the morning to offer her comfort.
“He was so reverent, kind and thoughtful,” Pelosi writes in her new memoir.
For all these reasons, it is easy to understand why Biden’s attempt to oust him from office has caused so much pain.
Jill Biden remains deeply concerned about her husband’s dignity and wishes he had been allowed to drop out of the 2024 presidential race on his own time and on his own terms.
Jill is also known to hold grudges – and she and Biden’s son Hunter are reportedly angry at Pelosi for what they see as a betrayal.
Next week the party will officially abandon the president.
Kamala Harris will be crowned the nominee at the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago. However, Biden will not be there to pass the torch.
Instead, he will give a short speech to the crowd on Monday evening, when many of the party’s major members will not yet have arrived, and then quickly leave town, leaving Harris to speak for the rest of the week.
Biden’s focus now is on “solidifying his legacy,” an insider said.
On Tuesday, he and the First Lady traveled to New Orleans to announce their new “Biden Cancer Moonshot” initiative, awarding $150 million to eight different research projects across the country.
However, there was an underlying dissatisfaction during the trip.
As Biden left the White House to begin his trip to the southern city, he stopped to answer a few questions from reporters. Behind him, Jill stood watching, arms folded and a painted frown.
This revealed the First Lady, who remains deeply concerned about her husband’s dignity and wishes he had been allowed to drop out of the 2024 presidential race on his own time and on his own terms.
Jill is also known to hold grudges – and she and Biden’s son Hunter are reportedly angry at Pelosi for what they see as a betrayal.
And now, as Biden shuffles off into the sunset, it’s hard to imagine that Pelosi’s continued tight grip on power in the Capitol will do anything to ease that resentment.
